A note about maple syrup!

I use Maple syrup rather than honey in most of my recipes.  

This isn’t just a personal preference (although I do prefer maple syrup if using it in the raw).  Maple syrup is actually better than honey for what I am trying to achieve!

Here goes with some science -  for a starter, and I for one was quite surprised by this, maple syrup is lower in calories than honey.  It's quite a significant amount - over 10%!

Also the carbohydrate content in maple syrup is primarily sucrose, which is a complex sugar that your body breaks down into equal parts of fructose and glucose whereas honey’s carbohydrate content is pretty much pure fructose and the problem with that is that too much fructose is detrimental to heart and liver health. 

Honey is however higher in vitamin content but maple syrup is much better on mineral content.  So I suppose that's a balancing act as to what you are trying to achieve.

On the whole, I tend towards maple syrup as I don’t use it in my recipes for the "what is good for me" content.   I use it as it adds sweetness, so the concern for me is much more about avoiding what is bad for me.  

One final thing to really keep in mind is that you should never give honey to babies or to children with a vulnerable health profile due to the risk of botulism.  That's a risk you don't run with maple syrup.  The botulism content of honey is very real - it isn't anywhere as insignificant as the risk of say salmonella with raw eggs.

Cooking with your child

This is by no means a guaranteed way of getting your child to experiment with what they'll put in their mouths but having fun with making food is a great way of getting the dialogue going.

To start with, rather than getting into battle mode and cooking things that are good for them, try something silly.  Maybe green eggs and ham - it doesn't matter if they don't eat it, it gives you a chance to talk about the food - how could we make the eggs green?  Experiment - what happens if we tip some green food colour in before we fry them?  Is there a way of making green eggs without scrambling them?  If we scramble them, what vegetable purees could we add that taste ok and make them go green?

There are two absolutely brilliant books available which base all their recipes on the foods mentioned in Roald Dahl's books - the first is called Revolting Recipes and the second Even More Revolting Recipes.  They aren't about anything nutritious at all - they are purely about having fun with food.  I think that's a really fabulous first step.

Some years ago, on a rainy weekend, I used to let the kids each choose a recipe they wanted to try from these books, then I'd go to the supermarket and grab all the ingredients and let each of them have their own time with me making their chosen recipe whilst the others watched t.v. or played games.  We all then dug in to what could be described as a somewhat eccentric and unhealthy tea with all sorts of "eeeyew"s and "yuck"s.

We took photos of the food and made it into a folder, the kids wrote out the recipes of the successes to go in their folders and began their own recipe books.  I only have my own daughter's one left now and she continues to add to it.  For her 18th, amongst plenty of other more expensive must haves I'm sure, I think I shall have it printed into a book for her.

Fresh or Frozen

I'm a big fan of frozen veg.

The thing about it is that frozen veg is ripe when it is harvested and therefore has drawn maximum goodness from its environment and it is then frozen very quickly so very little chance to lose that natural given goodness.

Ripening before harvest is why vine ripened tomatoes taste so much better than those flacid horrid things in the "Value" pack.

Food that is harvested and not frozen will often ripen after it has been picked, when it has nothing but thin air to draw on for that process.

Don't beat yourself up about not buying fresh veg - think about how long it takes from picking to plate and how much of its nutritional value is lost in that process.

I'm a big fan of thinking about food miles and buying local.  I'm also a big proponent of buying British where you can.  It isn't just a political preference either - buying local food means that you are eating food stuffs which have the same environmental influences as you do and gives you the opportunity to buy fresher.  It isn't always possible of course - if you want asparagus in December, you're unlikely to get it just up the road.  For me though, that's when to turn to frozen.

I read an article the other day where they called people with this view point "localvores", I think I'm not unhappy with that label.

If you buy British frozen peas, they will have been flash frozen in minutes from being picked.  Let's think of what happens in winter when you buy fresh peas from say Chile.

They are picked in Chile and packed into boxes.  The boxes are then packed onto a lorry - no hurry, they have all day to fill the lorry.  The lorry then takes the peas to an airport, the drive takes several hours.  They wait at the airport to be loaded onto a plane, whilst various checks are made to make sure it really is a box of peas being transported and eventually they are loaded onto a plane.  It takes a while as there are other consignments to be shipped on the same plane.  Some hours later the plane takes off.  How many hours do you reckon it takes to fly from Chile to London (assuming of course that there isn't a change of plane at another Chilean airport because the first one was just a small local air strip) - let's say the trip takes 17 hours.

Then we have British customs and more paper work as the peas are unloaded.  Eventually they get put on a lorry and taken off to a big warehouse where they are repacked for the supermarket.  Then, once they've been repacked and some quality control checks have been undertaken, they are packed onto further lorries and sent out to distribution centres where they change lorry and get taken to your local Tesco, where some hours later they will eventually find their way to the food shelf.  Now take a look at those Chilean peas and see what the sell by date says - bet your last dollar it's more than a few days away.  So all in all if you are lucky from vine to plate that's likely to be at least a week, during which time many nutrients have faded away.

So next time you get out a packet of frozen peas - don't beat yourself up - congratulate yourself on choosing what is probably the healthier option!

Being a Secret Chef - a stealth health method of getting your kids to eat what they say they won't!: Students' Cottage Pie

Students' Cottage Pie

I remember cooking this in a dingy flat in Chalk Farm in our little Baby Belling oven that looked like something you would take camping rather than have in your home!  Every time I see Rachel Khoo's Little Paris Kitchen, I'm transported right back there!

This recipe is so cheap to make and yet it's packed with goodies and really has a comfort value.  If I was feeling extravagant I sometimes added bits of bacon or ham and on poorer days a can of spam of corned beef!  Salivating just thinking of it - this will be tomorrow night's supper in our house so that I can post a picture!

With the cheese and potato the cauliflower disappears and yet it retains all of its goodness because it's been steamed.  This isn't gourmet cooking but there's 5 of your 5-a-day in this.

So you will need:

4 large potatoes (King Edwards or Caras are my favourites for mash) peeled and diced into 1inch cubes
1 head of cauliflower or 5 handfuls of frozen cauliflower
50g butter
200g cheddar cheese, grated
2 tins of beans
1 tin of sweet corn
4 sweet potatoes peeled and cubed into 1 inch pieces
2 large tomatoes- sliced

Serves 4

Preheat your oven to about 200C

1.    Boil the potatoes in a large pan of salted water (I generally don't do salt but I'm afraid mash needs it).

2.    Chop about an inch off the bottom of the cauliflower stalk and remove all leaves then cut the cauliflower, including any stalk into about 12 pieces and place in a steamer over a medium heat for about 10 minutes.

3.    Put the sweet potatoes in the steamer above the cauliflower and cover.

4.    Drain any liquid from the sweetcorn.

5.    Mash the sweet potato with a little of the butter.

6.    Mix the mashed sweet potato with the sweetcorn and beans and put in an oven proof dish.

7.    Mash the cauliflower and potatoes together with the remaining butter (add a little more if needed or some milk or leftover cream).

8.    Mix half the cheese with the potato/cauliflower mash then spoon the mash mixture over the beans and corn.

9.    Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the top and arrange tomato slices on top of that.  A dash of Worcestershire sauce over the top is good but maybe not for some picky eaters.

10.   Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes when the cheese should be golden on top and the beans bubbling away underneath.

Gender and the picky eater

I have been on the research trail and have noticed how difficult I find it to stop once I get going.  The topic is food neophobia (fear of trying new foods).

I realise that not all fussy eaters are neophobic - some of them are just plain old stubborn and playing mind games with mum!

I was really surprised to learn though that in the studies I could find, girls are more prone to food neophobia than boys.  Maybe that means that boys are more prone to being just plain fussy and it isn't a fear related thing.  I have read in the past that boys are generally wired to be less risk averse so I suppose it makes sense.

Really interesting to find that early incidence of ear infections seem to be linked to picky eating though. I know I've now got a few weeks worth of reading to work out why that is - wish my mind wasn't always quite so enquiring!

PS3 or Xbox time!

Chatting to a mum at the school gate yesterday, I mentioned how I got my picky eater step-son to eat up and she suggested it might be worth sharing that tip here, so here goes.

He's one of those kids who uses food as a weapon for attention and his particular speciality if he doesn't get pizza at every meal is to eat painfully slowly.  From what his mum says, I think going slowly is his way of showing his displeasure in all sorts of things actually.

I hate electronic games but like most young boys, he loves them and given his way, I think he'd fester in front of the TV with his Xbox or PS3 24/7, in dirty clothes, unwashed, munching on the odd pizza and drinking coke.....I'm guessing he'd not be alone in thinking that was an OK way forward either!

So, last time he was staying with us, I devised a new rule.  Lunch time was going to be at 1.30 sharp and PS3 time would be for half an hour from 2pm sharp.  So if he wanted to take forever eating his lunch, that was fine, but it would cut into his PS3 time and come 2.30pm, the PS3 was being unplugged.

It was the most pain free week of meal times I've spent with him in 6 years.  He finished quickly, cleared his plate, stacked it in the dishwasher, drank his drink (he usually acts as though I'm trying to poison him when it comes to drinking water or juice) and was polite and friendly throughout meal times.

Some will call this bribery - they may be right.  But it worked for us and I'm guessing it'll work for at least some others too!